Jumping Flea of Kaneohe By:
Brett Wagner The
story begins with a log. Perhaps it is a 30-inch length of acacia Arriving
at the world headquarters of Kanile‘a ‘Ukulele, I am greeted by a
friendly-ish rottweiler, two half-naked toddlers, and Kristen, Joe’s wife
and business partner. There is no question that Kanile‘a, despite its
growing reputation on three continents, is an ohana operation. Joe Souza
wipes sawdust on his shirt as he guides me into the workshop. It’s a space
not much bigger than a living room - which, in fact, it once was - now occupied by saws, sanders, stacks of wood, and the many dangling hulls of
soon-to-be ‘ukuleles. Joe
is a lifelong player, but he didn’t buy his first uke, a four-string
kamina tenor built by Pete Bermudez of Haiku ‘ukulele, until 1988. A year
later, he began sweeping the shop floor for “Uncle Pete” and learning
the luthier’s craft. He built the first Kanile‘a ‘ukulele in 1997, in
the back room of his house. As word spread among musicians and
collectors - mostly from Japan, the U.S. mainland, and Europe - the
workshop grew. Finally, last year, Joe’s passion took over his household
completely and the family relocated to make room for the expanding shop. In
the spare rooms of cramped houses, Joe and his generation of luthiers are
building themselves into the exuberant history of the ‘ukulele in
Hawai‘i. When the first one arrived by ship from Portugal in 1879, it was
called “braguinha” and came ashore in the arms of Joao Fernandez.
Tradition has it that Fernandez hopped onto the dock in Honolulu strumming
Portuguese folksongs in celebration of the long journey’s end. The
braguinha brought new melodic and harmonic possibilities to Hawaiian music,
and interest grew. Fortunately, another Portuguese vessel disgorged a few
skilled woodworkers eager to bring music to the masses. All the little
braguinha needed now was a Hawaiian name and a celebrity endorsement: The
latter was provided by King David Kala¯kaua, whose enthusiasm for the tiny
4-stringed guitar made it a sensation. The origin of the name
“‘ukulele” is not as certain, though the translation “jumping
flea” (describing a player’s fingers hopping about the fret board) has
charmed its way into popular history. The ‘ukulele became central to
Hawaiian music and culture; and Hawaii has become uke-central for the global
thousands - from Kyoto to Cleveland to Kathmandu - who share King
Kalakaua’s passion. But
this is the story of a log. What will be required to guide it into uke-hood?
The short answer is skill, patience, artistry, and more patience. Pointing
to the chunk of trunk by the door, Joe says, “Before that wood is ready to
become an ‘ukulele, it will age for 5 to 15 years.” Like fine wine and
tax returns, tone wood cannot be rushed. An uke made from insufficiently
aged wood might carry a tune as long as it remains in humid Hawai‘i, but
take it to Tulsa and watch it buckle and bow as trapped moisture escapes - rendering it useless except to decorate the wall of a T.G.I. Friday’s.
Kiln-drying is a shortcut employed by some manufacturers, but Joe will tell
you lumber’s tunefulness burns away in an oven. To produce an ‘ukulele
that your great-grand-keiki will strum in your honor, the only option is to
wait it out. Start
with a log of excellent tone wood. Spruce, red cedar, and sequoia are sure
bets; sliced thin they remain rigid lengthwise but flexible across the grain
- the recipe for resonance. Koa is treasured for its tone, too, but only
certain logs will do; the stress of high elevation produces trees with
narrower, tighter growth rings than those of their well-to-do cousins in the
lush valleys. Just as a life of hardship and privation has produced many a
great musician, so has it produced some excellent tone wood. Stress delivers
something else too - the prized “curly” grain pattern that makes
certain ‘ukuleles shimmer in the light. Premium-select curly wood, the
highest grade, is rare and hard to find, but that’s not to say it always
comes from the rim of a remote gulch on the Big Island. “I found this
piece of curly mango at Tru-Value Hardware. I saw it and said, ‘That’s a
beautiful piece of wood.’ It’s been drying for a year-and-a-half now.”
Check back with Joe in 2007, and he might show you the uke that narrowly
avoided becoming a shelf. Joe
ages his wood in three stages: 6 months in log form, half a decade as 2-inch
thick boards, and another three months at 3/16ths of an inch. These boards
he sands to their fighting width, 70/1000’s of an inch, and cuts into the
components of the uke’s body. The sides are steamed and pressed into
S-curves in aptly named “side-bending jigs.” The back of any proper uke
is curved slightly, too, to improve resonance. But the soundboard, the
source of a stringed instrument’s voice, the key to its soul - that’s
the art. Here Joe’s eagerness to talk story about his craft bumps up
against an impulse to protect trade secrets. He’ll say this much: The
challenge is to modulate the resonance of the soundboard with scalloped
braces affixed to its underside. “Too thick and the sound is muffled, too
thin and the integrity of the soundboard comes into question.” The only
way to gauge your progress is to tap the wood. Tap and listen. Listen, tap,
and tweak. That
Joe has a fine ear for the subtleties of tone (and the know-how to do
something with it) is more remarkable when you learn that making “It’s
gratifying to be able to help people. That’s what keeps me going into the
fire station. That and the camaraderie, also. The brotherhood. It’s
definitely not the money.” Joe might be the only man on Oahu who can
navigate a conversational detour from the finer points of mother-of-pearl
fret board inlays to the adrenaline surge of stepping inside a burning
house. There have been some chicken-skin moments in his seven years as a
fire-fighter, but Joe seems to value this part of his life as much as his
calling as a luthier. “Twenty years from now, I hope it’s the same.” Once
the body is assembled and the neck attached, the ‘ukulele’s musical
identity is born. Its tone, its voice, is determined by the quality of wood,
the dimensions of the body, and by the mysterious nuances of the
sound-board’s undercarriage. What remains to be achieved is the other half
of It’s
easy to see how making ‘ukuleles could consume every moment of Joe’s
life if he allowed it to, just as the shop consumed his house. “We don’t
make the tuning keys and we don’t make the strings, but everything else is
handcrafted from the log,” he remarks, the pride in his voice a signal of
this fireman’s commitment to the luthier’s art. I show him my own
‘ukulele, one I picked up in Waikiki two years ago.
Joe smiles and strums. “This is one of the nicer production ukes on
the island,” he says. “Production,” I take it, implies something less
than “hand-crafted from the log.” Well, yes: “The fingerboard comes
from Taiwan, the neck comes from California, the bridge from Indonesia.”
It turns out my ‘ukulele is better traveled than I am. The labors of three
nations went into it. Joe
has been rewarded for his talent and commitment with a growing reputation.
His instruments are increasingly regarded not just as things to play and
enjoy, but as an investment. In the universe of the collector, where a
pristine 1932 Martin 5K tenor might go for $25,000, some are banking that |
